USG elects Jorgensen, Dimcevski as senators

Baruch College’s Undergraduate Student Government officially elected two new representative senators — Alexander Dimcevski and Emma Jorgensen — on Nov. 21 during its senate meeting. A total of 14 students ran for the positions. Jorgensen was also confirmed as chair of appeals, a position she took over after serving as interim chair for two weeks. The vacancy opened when former Treasurer Ehtasham Bhatti resigned and former Chair of Appeals Suzanna Egan took his place on Nov. 9. The second vacancy followed the resignation of former Representative Sen. Josue Mendez. The two senators officially began serving on the table in the following senate meeting on Nov. 28.

The USG constitution notes that vacancies can only be filled following two weeks of public notice, often in the form of social media or news postings. Depending on whether it is an executive board position or a representative senator position, this also extends the rigor of the process to which people can apply.

For the treasurer position, Egan was chosen as the executive board’s nomination with her appeals experience in mind. The open senator positions, however, were left up to the table to vote for based on an application process. The guidelines of this process, however, are up to the discretion of the table during each election.

In order to prevent students who may have wanted to apply to both positions from becoming discouraged after applying to a position once and not receiving it the first time, the table deferred elections to the week of Nov. 21 in order to vote in both senators simultaneously. This was seen as a better variant to having one election two weeks before the other.

Jorgensen’s involvement with USG has stretched over the past three years in the form of participation on seven committees. Her involvement with appeals began this year, with her interview in June and the work beginning in September.

Jorgensen outlined appeals as a large time commitment, citing moments last semester when the team was handling around 13 to 14 appeals, and the work that went into scheduling all the meetings efficiently within the timespan of just two weeks.

Jorgensen, a marketing major,continued by describing some of the changes she’s hoping to bring with her growing involvement in USG.

“USG is big on transparency, and I feel we can still improve on that,” she said. Jorgensen went on to describe plans that she and the “money team” — the treasurer, the chair of finance, the chair of appeals and the chair of clubs and organizations — had for making forms easier for clubs to
understand.

“We are trying to work on figuring out a way to communicate our guidelines to the clubs. Some clubs still have questions with forms and USG completely understands how to do forms.” Jorgensen described videos as a possible way of communicating this information to clubs effectively.

Jorgensen is looking forward to her new role, saying, “I’m happy for the turn of events. I still have a lot to learn and I have some big shoes to fill with Suzanna but I’m excited about it.”

Dimcevski was the second senator elected the night of Nov. 21. He is a transfer student majoring in financial mathematics, and he is currently on Baruch’s swim team.

Some issues Dimcevski noticed around Baruch that propelled him to run for representative senator include the way large classes are being pushed to operate in terms of online coursework, the steep prices of the dormitories and the lack of resources some international students have. While USG may not be able to tackle some of these issues directly, they are issues that the government would be able to advocate for and issues that are currently within the senator’s realm of concern.

Dimcevski is excited to be a part of the team and expressed interest in his growing involvement with the students on the table.